A Wild Young Under-Whimsy

In which the random, trashy, pop-cultural musings of Mel are displayed in all their superficial glory.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

This just in at the Subeditorial Antics Appreciation Society. See, this is why I love the Hez. There is story in today's paper about racism claims - some British expats are mad about a beer ad campaign that suggests "Poms" drink their beer warm and "whinge" at the prospect of chilled beer. And the Hez referees this in its inimitable fashion - check out this subhead:

Monday, November 27, 2006

The wonders of the prop department. Last night I was watching the ABC at my parents' house, something I only do when I'm over there because we can't get it at our house. And there was some nostalgic station ID because the ABC has just turned 50. It was about a children's program called Adventure Island that was the 1960s version of Sesame Street in terms of production values and sheer cultural pervasiveness. But I cared nothing for any of this - I was looking at the pandas going, "Where have I seen these creatures before?" Because I certainly had never seen Adventure Island. It was really uncanny. But then it occurred to me - sweet mother of god, it's Shirty, the Slightly Aggressive Bear!

I don't know about the body, but it's totally the same head! Of course Shirty is a little more dishevelled from being in the ABC costume department for twenty-odd years. How awesome would it have been, though, to be producing The Late Show and having the run of the ABC's entire costume backlog? One of the things I always loved about the show was the shonky Year 9 Drama quality of all the props and costumes.

Friday, November 24, 2006

The post about gingers. (Pronounced with a hard G in order to rhyme with "ringers").

(image sent to me by Leanne in order to provoke me into posting this.)

Okay, after more beers in the office and further "will you take us to Mount Splashmore?" type pestering, I have finally been persuaded to post this masterwork about red-headed men. Obviously it will be sheer genius, where's me Nobel Prize fer Literature, etc. Fittingly, I am on my third Red Stripe.

As a heterosexual woman, I am not particularly interested in female gingers. However I will let Brandon Davis have the last word here, as he demands.

Okay are you ready? Here are some celebrity gingers...

You know, once Natalya convinced me that she used to go out with Tom Gleeson when she lived in Sydney. She was just making it up, but I totally believed her. Never mind, I got her back by claiming we had a special French hot chocolate on the shelf pronounced "o-val-tinay".

And would you like to have a look at some local gingers? Ones you can spot when you're out and go, COR!? Well here are the fine boys from The Basics. They are very well brought up.

And here is Hot Little James. Debate is raging (between me and Tash) as to whether he is actually a ginger. I maintain he isn't, whereas Tash says he is. This photo does nothing to prove either of us right, but it does demonstrate that he is pretty.

And of course there is Thom, ginger-about-town...

You know, when I first envisaged this post it was going to be a thoughtful consideration of the perverse appeal of red-headed men, given that they're so reviled yet such a source of fascination. I have been reading a fascinating book called Mutants: On the Form, Variety and Errors of the Human Body, in which Armand Marie Leroi asks the question - are gingers mutants? Generally, mutations can be distinguished from genetic variations using two criteria - how common the genotype is in the general human population, and whether it's a gain-of-function or loss-of-function mutation.

Leroi writes that redheadedness is caused by around six separate genetic variations (thus accounting for ginger, auburn, carrot, etc), any one of which is globally rare enough to be considered a mutation. In addition, you can argue that redheadedness is a loss-of-function gene because it leaves you more susceptible to skin cancers, and that perhaps it's a dying gene - a relic of northern climates with little sunlight, where pale skin and red hair helped absorb vitamin A.

I should add that there is plenty of ginger in my family. My mum, her mum and her brother, my dad's brother, and my brother and cousins, are all various shades of gingers.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Wiggity-wiggity-wack. I am still feeling unhappy and ridiculous. Ms Fits was no help at all. I want very much to be taken seriously, but the trouble is that the things I am serious about are considered superficial by other people. For example, last week a boy in a band asked to read my thesis. I want him to read it so that he will realise I am capable of sustained, intelligent argument, but I can't help thinking that he only wants to read it to discover the extent of my ridiculousness. I have been trying to 'own' my tastes and my interests, but a lot of the time I dearly wish I was interested in some legitimately erudite field of enquiry, and not retarded bullshit that leaves me open to mockery.

But anyway. This is all by the by, because earlier I was thinking about the qualities in someone's hair that makes it look like a wig. I always think this is a really unfortunate quality in hair and one to be avoided at all costs. I am not putting down people who have to wear a wig for some reason or other; for some reason it is much more unfortunate to me if your actual hair looks like a wig.

Excessive Sheen

I always get suspicious of someone if their hair looks very shiny. Sometimes this can happen to natural hair with the use of conditioners and styling products, but combined with other 'wig indicators' below, it looks like nylon.

Excessive Volume

Wiggy hair looks all bulky and sticks out from the head in a way that looks instantly suspicious.

Coarse Texture

If the texture of the hair is too coarse and matted, it comes to resemble a bad wig - the sort that look like they've been shoved at the back of a wardrobe for 30 years.

Excessive Neatness

Wigs are extremely overstyled and look freshly cut. So I tend to get suspicious of excessively neat hair that doesn't move freely as the person walks.

Odd Colour

You can see that this is nowhere near her natural hair colour.

Suspicious Bulky Fringes

They have to hide the edges of the wig somehow. The best wigs have parts with individually sewn-in hairs that resemble real hair, but it's the bulky fringe that really screams "wig!" to me.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

I want your text. On Monday night I was in Readings and as I walked towards the door, I passed a young man who looked familiar. He raised his head expectantly to me as we crossed paths and I thought to myself, "Oh, I know him." I had a distinct mental picture of the way his eyes and mouth would crinkle as he smiled at me. And it dawned on me that it was Jonty! Jontyjonty! Whom I'd only met once, but had liked before I ever met him because as you all know, I am very deeply invested in jauntiness. And when I did meet him I liked him instantly because he was so friendly-looking.

After the satisfying revelation that it was Jonty, I went in search of food on Lygon Street, but all my favourite venues were overrun with middle-aged bourgies clearly on a 'night out', who barrelled rudely past me as I paused to see if there was room for a solitary person in there somewhere. Even the crappy fish and chip shop, whose burgers taste pretty ordinary but were still acceptable in the circumstances, had run out of its merely acceptable burgers. So I went to this Italian restaurant on Elgin Street that I'd never been to before, despite living around the corner for - goodness - a whole year now!

To: Jonty13 Nov 2006 21:14Hey, this is mel. Did i just see you in readings? I couldn't be sure but I thought I recognised your friendly eyes.

From: Jonty13 Nov 2006 21:29Yes! I was using my do you recognise me face and i thought maybe its not mel and by the time i had computed all of the above you had walked past oops

To: Jonty13 Nov 2006 21:31Next time i will recognise your do you recognise me face... Have a lovely evening!

From: Jonty13 Nov 2006 21:42I acknowledge that i am a terrible mel recogniser next time i will prove my reputation wrong cheers

This restaurant had a TV that was tuned to Music Max. It was the request program. While I ate lasagna that was way too salty and had obviously been reheated because it was cold in the middle, and drank a glass of comparatively delicious house red, I watched the various video clips.

To: Will Fop13 Nov 2006 21:23One good thing can be said of madonna: she has always had pale skin and not promoted unhealthy tanning.

One of the videos I was watching was Jon Bon Jovi's "Bed of Roses". For tonaaaaaagggght, ah sleep, on a behhhhhd, of nails! It was from that 90s era when he cut his hair and I suddenly realised, "Jon Bon Jovi's actually kinda attractive - does - not - compute..."

To: Reuben13 Nov 2006 21:30Seriously, what surname is cool enough to name an entire band after? Obviously apart from bon jovi.

From: Reuben13 Nov 2006 21:31Um, this is quite random. Is this a rhetorical question?

To: Reuben13 Nov 2006 21:34I really would like to hear some ideas. Imagine you're richie sambora and jon says, how about we call it after me. You'd be like '...'

To: Reuben13 Nov 2006 21:37Oh there's goldfrapp.

From: Reuben13 Nov 2006 21:39Well van halen is timeless... I can not see a band called Acciano, though... My year ten metal work teacher was called rudolph Wegwermer and my maths teacher was mrs bogensperger. Either of those is good...

To: Reuben13 Nov 2006 21:41What better name for a metal work teacher? You should totally name a band after him!

From: Reuben13 Nov 2006 21:39Bachmann turner overdrive...

The wine got tastier and tastier as the glass wore down. Have you noticed the way wine does that?

To: Penny, Tash, Leanne13 Nov 2006 21:50Right now i'm watching to video for robert palmer's addicted to love. And the model pretending to play drums is about as competent at it as i am.

From: Tash13 Nov 2006 21:52Awesome.

From: Penny13 Nov 2006 21:57That was a really great video clip brain

When I said that she was about as competent as me, I meant that she was incredibly incompetent. It made me feel much better about myself. Ever since it was decided that I was going to play the drums in the Is Not Magazine band, I have been watching every drummer in every live band I've seen since, trying to work out how the fuck they do it. And although I find it hard to shake the fantasy that I would sit down behind a kit and instinctively know how to drum, I am sure I am going to be incredibly shithouse.

If you watch this video, you'll notice that the drummer is not the only incompetent one. The keyboardist isn't even playing anything, the guitarist is kind of randomly strumming, and I don't even think I see the bassist's hands moving.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

What I did on Melbourne Cup Day. I had a very boring Cup Day. I dragged myself out of bed, severely hungover from the Horses! party, and went to the office, where I did work in the morning. Then I had much-needed dumplings and hot'n'sour soup for lunch, followed by gelati. Then I went back to the office, where I did nothing in particular. Y'know. Checked MySpace. Checked Mess+Noise. Checked blogs. Listened obsessively to Icehouse albums. (I considered writing a post about Icehouse, but it kinda got away from me.) That took me through to about 8pm. Then I met a friend for dinner on Brunswick Street. Then I went home and read the Melbourne Times in bed.

Pretty exciting, huh.

Lately I have been worrying about what a dirty hipster I am becoming. It's like the narrative arc in any 'transformation' movie, from Can't Buy Me Love and Teen Wolf to Mean Girls and The Devil Wears Prada. The hero or heroine starts off as a well-meaning dork and turns into an ostensibly popular monster who has a moment of crisis when someone from his/her old life disgustedly confronts him/her. These scenes almost always end with the dorky past-person shaking their head sadly and saying, "See ya," before walking off, leaving the hero/ine in dismay.

For a while I could pretend I was doing 'field research', that I had a degree of detachment from the 'scene'. But that position became untenable a couple of weeks back when Tash and I won a bottle of vodka at an iPod DJing night at Honkytonks. We were all-girl R&B duo Plump'n'Rosie (Nell-E Plumpkin and Rosie Fantail), and we were wearing hotpants, boots, ridiculous bling, and matching oversized white t-shirts with "Plump" and "Rosie" on them in pink glitter letters. And we loved it. It wasn't in any way ironic.

I want to work through this issue of affect in hipster culture, as I have to give a paper about it in under a month now. I don't know what this has to do with Cup Day. My Cup Day says more about my dreadful aptitude for procrastination than anything else.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Get in the saddle for Cup Eve! Yes, in case I haven't told you about this in person, Is Not Magazine is having a Cup Eve party. And what other theme suggested itself but HORSES!

I have personally overseen the compilation of the official souvenir mix CD. It contains horse-themed songs by such artists as Prince, Belinda Carlisle, Rolling Stones, Salt'n'Pepa, Aerosmith, Goldfrapp, Patti Smith, Girls Aloud (as promised to dear William) and the proverbial MUCH MUCH MORE!

See you all there for FREE FOOD and FREE BOOZE and the chance to see me wearing a dress with horses on it and possibly also some manner of FASCINATOR.